2022: A Year in review

2022 was the happiest, best, most-mentally-stable year I have ever had. I turned 24, I traveled all over the world, I learned how to truly love and appreciate myself, and best of all - I’ve grown into a woman I’m extremely proud of. It has taken work and time and tears and lots of laughs to get here, but I wouldn’t change a thing. In the last 12 months, I’ve learned so much and I’m excited to share some of my major takeaways from 2022.

  1. No one is going to stand up for you if you don’t stand up for yourself.

I have spent the majority of my life as a chronic people-pleaser - something I have worked very hard to unlearn. I went into 2022 resolved to do things differently, to learn how to not only stand up for myself when necessary, but also how to put myself first in general. Now, I won’t sit here and tell you that I’ve cracked the code, or that I no longer feel the crippling weight of guilt and shame when I don’t bend over backwards for people or things or institutions that don’t deserve that kind of self-sacrificing effort. I know in my heart and in my brain that when I stand up for myself, I’m not being mean or rude or unkind or a bad person, but the voice of my former self still whispers that it is selfish to not allow myself to be steam rolled.

And even as I continue trying to ignore that voice and all that it stands for, I know deep down that a lifetime of feeling guilty for wanting to be treated with basic respect and decency cannot be completely overcome in a year - though that doesn’t mean you can’t make progress. So instead of beating myself up every time a situation or person went unchecked, I focused on practice over perfection. And every single time I stood up for myself, it got easier to do.

Whether it was something really hard like having a tough conversation with friends, or something seemingly easy like going back into the Chick-fil-A to ask for the sandwich they forgot to put in the bag when we went through the drive-thru, I pushed myself to practice this new skill in every scenario that I was comfortable enough to do it. And I quickly realized that there is strength and courage and a whole new level of trust in myself to be found in speaking up and speaking out. Each time I swallowed my anxiety and about having needs and asking for them to be met, each time I pushed away the guilt for standing my ground when I knew something wasn’t right or fair, the aftermath was only ever relief and a deeper appreciation for my own personal power.

The thing is, 2022 proved to me just how much I had been letting people get away with in my life. In learning to stand up for myself, I realized that I had not been treating myself like someone who deserved to stand up for herself. And before I could ask other people to treat me with respect, I had to realize internally that no matter what flaws I perceived in myself, I always deserved to be treated well. And to take it one step further - I had to start acting like the type of person who not only deserves respect, but demands it, like it was never a question to begin with (because it isn’t).

With each new situation, each experience of asking for what I deserve, I found myself more confident, more assured and more at peace with myself, knowing that I will never again allow myself to be mistreated when I have the choice of speaking up. I am finally standing in my full power, and all of the past versions of myself are healing knowing they can trust me to live the life I have always deserved.

2. Knowing (and loving) yourself is key to becoming happy.

This sounds a little self-explanatory, but it deserves to be said because of just how impactful it’s been in my day to day life. If you’ve read some of my other work, you know that 2021 was the hardest year of my life. It was dark in ways I have never expected and painful in ways I hope I never have to experience again. So as we headed into 2022, my main goal was simple - I wanted to be happy. I was sick of being sad and angry and miserable - I wanted joy and peace and fun and I was going to do whatever I needed to do to get there.

So I did. I spent hours reflecting, days spent writing in my journal and asking myself what seemed like obvious questions but that came with such complicated answers - What do I like to do? What makes me the happiest? Who do I like spending time with, and how do I feel when I’m with those people? How can I become a person that I like spending time with? What parts of who I am are authentic, and what parts of me are there because I felt like they should be? What parts of me do I even like, let alone love? Who am I, when all the chips are down? And more importantly - who do I WANT to be?

Doing this kind of soul-searching is what allowed me to get to a place where I could confidently make choices that led to happiness and fun and adventure. I got down to the root of who I was, what made me happy and what made me sad and what seemed to revive me rather than burn me out. I became the type of person who really knows themselves, or at the very least, the kind of person who tries really hard on a regular basis to get to know their past, present and future selves and to act in a way that would make all of these versions of me proud.

Knowing myself and loving myself and growing into a version of myself that I am obsessed with has allowed me to trust myself and the choices that I make. Because knowing yourself means knowing what you need to be happy. Knowing yourself means loving doing things on your own, because you’ve become your own favorite person. Knowing yourself means trusting that you can choose to create a life you love living.

I know that I love to travel and see new places, so I say yes to spontaneous trips. I know that I need solitude and alone time, so I choose to remove myself from the hubbub & retreat to the safe space between the walls of my bedroom and the pages of my journal. I know that I love to spend time with the people I love, so I make a point to make plans or phone calls or send texts to the people who almost always improve my mood. I know that I crave freedom and creativity and purpose, so I chose a career that could give me those things. The more I get to know myself, the more I like myself, and the more accurately I can make choices that will make me happy. A simple formula, but one that has changed the trajectory of my 20’s and everything that comes after that.

3. Trust that everything will always work out how it’s meant to.

For Christmas this year, I got a desk calendar with Zen sayings / teachings on each page. I recently read one from Tibetan Buddhists that said “Remember that sometimes not getting what you want is a wonderful stroke of luck.” As someone with a tendency to get down on myself when I don’t get what I want or something doesn’t work out the way that I wanted, it stopped me in my tracks a little bit and got me thinking about the last year (or two or three) of my life.

There were so many things that didn’t go the way that I expected them to, but ended up better than I ever could have imagined. There were so many things that I thought I wanted, but as I continued growing and learning, realized that maybe I was better off without. There were relationships I wanted to heal and people I wanted to change, but letting go of these things allowed me to embrace whatever came next.

When I first entered 2022, I thought I would be somewhere and someone else at this point. I wanted change and growth, and in my mind that meant I had to leave and create a whole new life somewhere else. I wanted to move across the country and start over - somewhere that nobody knew me, where I could make a name and a life for myself. But of course, the universe had other plans. 2022 has shown me the power of stillness, the healing capabilities of resting and reflecting and nurturing yourself. Growth does not come only from radical change, but also from choosing to find the lessons in every single day of your life.

It turned out that my desire to uproot had less to do with a desire for growth, and much more to do with the fact that I thought I could out-run the depression and anxiety and grief and shame and guilt and any other negative emotions I didn’t want to feel or process. I thought if I went somewhere new, I would have new problems to deal with instead - which to some degree is probably true. But in addition to those problems, I would still have had to deal with my already existing issues that weren’t going anywhere, and I wouldn’t have been in a supportive, comforting environment surrounded by the people I love while I did it.

For so long I cursed the universe for not giving me what I thought should be mine, I begged and pleaded and cried to invisible spirit guides to tell me what I was doing wrong, what I was doing that made me so undeserving of the things that I wanted. And the whole time, the universe gently steered me in the right direction, sending subtle reminders until the message sank in - I’ll never miss out on something that is truly meant for me, and even more so, wherever I am right at this moment is exactly where I am supposed to be. If what I want isn’t happening, then it either isn’t supposed to happen yet, or the universe has something even better coming my way. Either way, putting my trust in the unknown has brought a peace to my day-to-day existence in a way I never thought possible. Sure, I have free will and make my own decisions, but I also know I’m being guided towards a life that’s been designed just for me, to make me the happiest, most fulfilled version of myself possible and the more I put my faith in that, the closer I get to living it.

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